Letters to the editor

Published 6:49 pm, Thursday, December 6, 2012

I would like to thank the Stamford Advocate, S.E.A and the Stamford Community for their endorsement and overwhelming support during my first time run for the Board of Education in Stamford. Even though I was unsuccessful this time, the narrow margin of votes keeps me hopeful that the community really wants a change.

A new movement in education is happening and with that in mind, new innovative ideas are being aggressively discussed as to how to educate all children at risk. The Achievement Gap will close or the strength of America will suffer in the global world. Simply put, the chain is only as strong as each link that makes up the chain.

Dolores Burgess

Stamford

Seeking better reporting

To the editor:

Recent articles in this paper supposedly "reporting" on the state of our school district have been criticized for dubious analysis and potential bias against the district. As the school district budget represents the largest investment our city makes in both our budget and our future, it is natural to expect a high level of journalistic rigor when reporting on these issues.

Wednesday's front page article on the election for president of the Board of Education demonstrates a complete lack of this rigor and further calls into question the quality of both the reporting and any editorial oversight, if it exists at all.

In one instance, former president Polly Rauh, who was elected with the highest vote total in the city, is noted to "likely continue to be involved" with the board. Huh? Next, board member John Leydon, previously described as a Democrat in the article, is labeled Republican at the end of the article.

Basic journalistic standards demand basic fact checking and honest reporting. If a front page article on something as simple as an election at the Board of Education can't get it right, how can this paper be trusted to report, much less analyze, the larger issues facing the education of our children and their impact on our city, our future?

An article on Nov. 23 noted that the state's budget deficit was attributed in part to soaring Medicaid costs as a result of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's decision to anoint Connecticut the first state to adopt the provisions of Obamacare. In Wednesday's paper we learned that this deficit is attributable to "higher than projected Medicaid costs" and will attempt to be recovered by cutting the state's transit service spending.

Is this the Democratic version of "fairness" . . . because it sure looks like a form of tax increase to me.